Greenwald: OWS cannot be turned into a Democratic Party movement

The issue of OWS co-option has been much feared and much discussed. (Chris Hedges take is here, along with some thoughts of my own.)

Now Glenn Greenwald takes the question by the horns, in a stunningly researched piece called "Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party movement?"

He starts by quoting the New York Times (Greenwald's emphasis):

Leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s powerful House fund-raising arm, is circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to declare that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

The Center for American Progress, a liberal organization run by John D. Podesta, who helped lead Mr. Obama’s 2008 transition, credits the protests with tapping into pent-up anger over a political system that it says rewards the rich over the working class ... Judd Legum, a spokesman for the center, said ... Democrats are already looking for ways to mobilize protesters in get-out-the-vote drives for 2012.

After quoting Politico to the same effect, Greenwald asks, "Can that scheme work?"

Can the Occupy Wall Street protests be transformed into a get-out-the-vote organ of Obama 2012 and the Democratic Party? To determine if this is likely, let’s review a few relevant facts.

The next nine paragraphs, taken together, are the strongest, tightest indictment of the Obama administration as Wall Street handmaiden I've ever read. Please do read them; they are accessible and, to my mind, irrefutable.

Starting with Obama's 2008 election fundraising — noting contemporaneous election-season articles like “Democrats are darlings of Wall St“ and “Wall Street puts its money behind Obama” — Greenwald moves quickly and cleanly through the Hall of Shame we witnessed the last three years.

Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Chuck Schumer, Tim Geithner, Mark Patterson, Michael Paese (former top Barney Frank staffer turned Goldman lobbyist), Ben Bernanke, Jeffery Immelt, Rahm Emanual, Bill Daley, and the DoJ's blind eye — all neatly, trial-lawyerly skewered. These nine paragraphs could be cut out and nailed, like Luther's 95 Theses, to the wall of DNC headquarters, so effectively are they written.

That said, Greenwald then asks (again, Greenwald's emphasis):

Given these facts, does the Center for American Progress really believe that the protest movement named OccupyWallStreet was begun ... in order to devote themselves to ensuring that these people remain in power?

He thinks that the OWS protesters are, in large part, aware of much of the information he presented, and they're unlikely to be backed into the Democratic corner by whichever hack the Republicans eventually nominate (emphasis now mine):

As Naomi Klein explained after speaking to the protesters, the reason they are out on the street rather than working for the DNC or OFA is precisely because they concluded that electoral politics or working for either party will not address the issues motivating them; part of what they’re protesting is the Democratic Party.

Thus Greenwald answers his question with a resounding No.

I have to agree. The pain and suffering felt by those of us aware-niks, watching cave after cave, from the pre-inauguration FISA give-back to the Father Christmas gift of the Bush tax cuts, created our (politely named) "2012 problem".

I'd be shocked if the aware-niks on the street aren't responding with their feet to the frustration that causes me to write. Occupy.

(UPDATE: Fixed some bad HTML.)

GP